He handed her a glass of pink-bubble goodness and sat down next to her, his thigh touching hers and sending a frisson of awareness shooting through her. “Anything I can help with?”

“Only if you can make my jerk of an uncle disappear permanently so I don’t have to see him at the building holiday party.” The words were out of her mouth before the alternate meaning of them was processed. “Wait. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Nash turned his head so his lips nearly brushed against her ear. “You mean you don’t want me to off him?”

He wasn’t serious, she knew that. Still, there was something a little feral in the way he said it that made her twisted little heart grow a few sizes. Okay, fine, it reminded her of the alpha heroes in her paranormal romances who went all in for their loves. Not that Nash loved her—or would ever love her—but mental muscle memory was a thing.

“Sweet of you to offer,” she said, “but I look horrible in jailhouse orange.”

He winked at her, setting off a whole heart-flutter thing, and took a drink of his wine. “I was concerned when the bartender said this was made with Concorde grapes, but it’s actually really good.”

“Yeah, it’s my favorite,” she said, taking a sip of the rosé, the tiny bubbles fizzing against her tongue before she swallowed. “It’s happiness in a bottle, and who doesn’t need a little of that?”

“You know, I could go to that holiday party with you,” he said, double dimples on full display. “To run interference with your uncle. Really, it would seem a little weird if your husband didn’t go.”

“You’d do that?” Chelle tried to remember the last time she didn’t have to go solo when a probable confrontation with family was involved and came up blank.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“There will be games and mandatory fun with watered-down drinks,” she said. “Why I ever suggested having a building holiday party, I have no idea.”

Well, beyond the combined high of finishing a book and getting to dive into the annual reread of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Earthsea Cycle. Yep. Sometimes two rights did make a wrong, even if it didn’t work the other way around.

“Maybe it will be so bad it will be good,” Nash said.

“So it could be the ugly Christmas sweater of holiday parties?” She snorted, trying to imagine the perpetually uptight and bitchy Suzanne in a garish green-and-red sweater with a cat wearing a Santa hat on it. “It’s going to be the absolute opposite of the perfect night, which would involve wine, a fireplace, and having my favorite book read to me. To think the party will be anything but misery, you must be an optimist.”